Camille Isaacs

photo of Camille Isaacs

Camille Isaacs is an Assistant Professor of English at OCAD University in Toronto, specializing in postcolonial, and black diasporic literatures, particularly the Caribbean. She has considered the transmission of affect through social media for African women in the diaspora: Mediating Women’s Globalized Existence through Social Media in the Work of Adichie and Bulawayo was published by Safundi in April 2016. In addition, her edited volume, Austin Clarke: Essays on His Works, was published by Guernica Editions in 2013. Her current research considers aging and memory in Caribbean literature..  Her area of research and practice focuses on the critical intersections of art+social change in labour, border politics, migration and social justice movements.  

“My connection to discussions about blackface is quite personal. One of my research interests considers black aesthetics, particularly as it relates to women. The historic mocking of many black women’s appearances, even in contemporary times (consider the repeated comments about Michelle Obama and Leslie Jones, for example), speaks to the invisibility and hypervisibility of black people, which blackface enables. Continued examples of blackface across university campuses and in the wider community highlight blacks’ lack of perceived humanity, unless they are made hypervisible through surveillance or caricature.” 

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